Combat
Life as a colonist can be dangerous on the planet surface, so it is a good idea to know how to defend yourself and your party from the ill-tempered wildlife. Before entering combat, you should make sure your weapon of choice is equipped, and use the command ACTIONS to see what commands you can use in combat. Not every weapon has the same commands and some have more than one (usually with varying use of your dice pools). Some very useful commands during combat are ST, which will give you your personal status including health and dice available, and TAC, which will give you tactical health information for all entities in the room. Eating before combat is a good way to improve your effectiveness, as it often provides a bonus to your dice rolls and max health, and also improves your dice pool regeneration. You can see this on the ST screen; you should see the effect "Nourished". Attacking You can optionally use the command CON to consider its strength compared to your own. To initiate combat, you will need to target the enemy using KILL , and then enter the command of your weapon of choice, for example SWING for the colonial machete or FIRE for the M141 rifle. The game will check to see if you hit the enemy (generally stamina dice for melee and clarity dice for ranged), and if you hit, will then roll for how much damage you inflict (aggression dice). You will need to enter the command for your weapon for each hit, but should only need to target once, even if the enemy wanders off and you follow it. Each attack will reduce the number of dice you have, and this takes time to regenerate. If you do not have the minimum number of dice to use the command of your weapon, then you will not be able to attack. Healing If you have taken damage during combat, this will not regenerate over time like your dice pools. Luckily there are several ways to heal yourself. Fibrous bandages can be made on the basic crafting tool from native fibers, and are an excellent way of healing early on. With the bandage in your inventory, enter USE BANDAGE and you will gain the effect "Bandaged" (again, viewable on the ST screen). If you were bleeding, then it will remove one of these effects, and you will start to gain Health every few seconds. The infirmary building has a room called the Clinic, which will automatically heal you over time. It will also attempt to diagnose and cure any diseases you may have, which may be useful if you have picked something up from a rare biome. You can build the infirmary yourself using the structure crafting tool, or check to see if a nearby colony has one, as they are normally left unlocked for use by anyone. The skill "First Aid" (part of the Medicine skill group) grants the BANDAGE command. You can also heal party members with special equipment such as the sawbones brand med-projector and the e-med broadbeam. To use these you will need to ASSIST as well as KILL (counter-intuiative, but necessary to target the player). Then use the command of the special equipment, for example HEAL, and the equipment will begin to heal the party member for an amount dependent on a clarity roll.